The Berlin Wall opened because of a fumbled press conference

historyWikipedia1989 · Berlin, East Germany

The Berlin Wall opened because of a fumbled press conference

the gist

On 9 November 1989, East Germany opened its border checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, and its citizens could cross to West Berlin for the first time in decades. The opening came after a Politburo press conference announced, prematurely, that East Germans could travel without restrictions. The spokesman, Günter Schabowski, had been handed the note shortly before and was unsure when the rule took effect; asked, he answered that it was effective immediately. East and West German media broadcast the news, crowds gathered at the crossings, and puzzled border guards, with no orders, let them through late in the evening. Over the next days thousands streamed across. Hundreds had been killed trying to cross the border since it was fortified.

so what

The Wall had divided Berlin since 1961. Its fall led to the reunification of Germany in 1990 and became the defining image of the end of the Cold War.

the bigger pattern

Small slips can change history: a misunderstood announcement turned a controlled easing of travel rules into the collapse of a border, much as accidents and miscommunications have triggered other turning points.

fun fact

Within days, people were chipping off pieces of the Wall with hammers, earning them the nickname Mauerspechte, or wall woodpeckers.

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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